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When I landed in Kunming, China, I thought it was over: my swashbuckling days of rogue adventure travel were on hold.
I surrendered my advanced biometrics data to the Chinese Communist Party’s “Big Brother” program to be monitored by street side cameras, at grocery stores, and even through my own phone.
I had to go running at 5:00 am to avoid great pods of pedestrians that dominated all other hours. Car and train horns echoed through towering skyscrapers at night, and there was always an open noodle shop.
I even paid for my hostel by scanning a QR code with my iPhone.
All signs indicated that wild adventure travel in China would be tricky because of strict government oversight, a massive population, and my decrepit Mandarin skills.
I would never have believed that, nine days later, I would complete a grueling 24-mile holy Buddhist pilgrimage to altitudes above 15,800 feet and in an area so remote that I wouldn’t see another person until mile 23.
I never thought that one week later I would have the honor to observe a sacred Tibetan sky burial—a traditional method of disposing corpses by cutting and feeding them to vultures.
At that moment, in Kunming, I could not have imagined that I would hitchhike partway across the Tibetan plateau, find a yak stuck in a concrete drainage canal while walking to hot springs, and be treated to dinner by a wonderful Kham Tibetan woman–all within the span of 24 hours.
I have a somewhat-dorky, unintentionally-condescending, and thoroughly-generous Chinese backpacker to thank: Wang.
This short, middle-aged Chinese man who carried his laptop in a satchel and thought I was 34 years old boasted about China’s “Wild West,” but discouraged me from going. He talked for hours about how much he loved the overland route, but in the kindest way possible, Wang explained, I lacked the language skills and my timeframe offered little margin for error.
I smiled and nodded as he simultaneously described the remote cities and mountains while exchanging my 19-hour “standing” train ticket for a “sleeper” ticket (un-doing my first of two ticket blunders). Wang described the epic route from Chengdu, across the Tibetan Plateau, and down to Shangri-La.
This route requires taking public buses great distances through no-man’s land and to cloud-scraping altitudes above 15,400 feet. It demands proficiency in Mandarin. It offers full immersion in Tibetan culture in towns just outside of the “official” borders of Tibetan Autonomous Region (an area restricted from Americans).
In other words, this long overland route goes through a remote area with a culture that is normally kept hidden from Westerners.
One week later, it happened: I followed in Wang’s footsteps and left the bustling Chengdu for an adventure through China’s Wild West.
I got to the bus station as it opened 6:20 am and bought a ticket for the one daily bus to Litang that left at 6:30 am. As I scrambled to get everything onboard, I felt proud of how far my Mandarin skills progressed: I was able to locate the bus station, buy a ticket to the correct destination, and get on the bus all within the 10 minute window. Maybe luck was on my side!
As the Chinese bus gurgled and rolled, buildings give way to tunnels, and eventually snowy mountains appeared. We stopped for the bus’s annual safety check—an hour of sitting in a cold parking lot while mechanics poke the engine.
When the 9-hour bus ride from Chengdu ended around sunset, I put on my massive backpack and wandered through the Tibetan town of Litang. Litang boasts vast grassy flatlands, rolling hills, and distant mountains. It’s a small town without a tree in sight, and in the winter, most things are brown.
The dry, cold air at 13,000 feet bit my skin, and I looked homeless. I even considered sleeping on a nearby hill.
Several miles later, I accidentally found a hostel called “Medok’s Inn.” I entered, was offered a reasonable price, and struck up a conversation with the receptionists.
Like most Chinese people I meet, they were bamboozled and entertained with my Mandarin proficiency. They phoned the owner, Medok, to come meet the “American who spoke Chinese.” I met Medok—a sweet young Tibetan woman who spoke fantastic English. After telling her about my travels before and in China, about Buchanan Project, and hopes for the overland journey, she could not have been more supportive.
Medok told me—staring with intrigued, gentle eyes and a soft smile—that she’s met enough people that she can identify good and bad ones simply through eye contact. She smiled and told me I was a good person.
Medok invited me to dinner for the following night, gave me detailed instructions to find the 7th Dalai Lama’s birth house, told me about the local hot springs, and invited me to witness a sacred Tibetan “sky burial” the following morning.
I had mixed feelings about observing the burial as an outsider, but everything else sounded great!
In Tibetan Buddhism, once a person dies their soul ascends to heaven and their body is nothing more than an empty vessel. The act of feeding the body to birds is seen as one final gesture of selflessness and kindness, for they offer their remains to birds.
The ritual, Medok explained, is in a public area and is often accompanied by lighthearted and happy behavior, as this is supposed to ease the soul’s transition to heaven. I would be welcome, but should observe from afar.
Of course I would go.
At the crack of dawn, I went downstairs and loaded into a car. I was dropped off on a distant hillside before sunrise and saw bundles of prayer flags. Soon, I spotted hundreds of hammers, axes, and knives on the ground.
Piles of Tibetan prayer tablets and flags lined the hills while bird feathers and human bone splinters speckled the dry grass. In the predawn light, the hillside felt powerful. After stumbling upon a severed hand, I grew uneasy and wandered away.
I climbed a nearby ridge and watched the sunrise, drank tea, and meditated for an hour. When I returned, there was still nobody in site, so I hiked more. Several hours later, on my return walk, I saw dozens of gargantuan birds circling in the distance and heard their screeches grow in intensity and frequency.
I walked towards the commotion and saw a burial beginning: several men unloaded a bare corpse from the back of a car as monks burned incense. I sat on a hill far away, quietly observing the sacred ritual.
One man cut the body as the others shooed birds away, waving trash bags to intimidate them. The cutter would detach pieces of the corpse and toss them to the frenzy of birds. The whole process was very raw, peaceful, and loud. No tears, just the thud of an axe and frenzy of birds. No grieving, just smiling monks.
Once most of the body had been methodically dismembered by the monk and consumed by the massive flock vultures, the monks crushed the remaining bone into a powder, mixed it with tsampa and other spices to make it more palatable for the vultures. I don’t know how long the burial took: it was a blur.
For Westerners, sky burials seem violent and grotesque. But on the Tibetan plateau, the practice is sacred as it is practical: the hard soil would not allow for bodies to decompose, and a lack of trees make cremation financially impractical. With sky burials, all of the body is returned to the earth instantly. The family of the deceased does not attend the burial, and all grieving, prayers, and goodbyes are done before the ritual.
As I walked across the flatland towards town after the sky burial, I realized that this may have been the most “out there” experience I’ve had traveling thus far. I am incredibly honored and grateful for Medok’s inviting me. I strongly discourage people from attending a burial unless they are expressly invited.
Sky burials are not a tourist attraction.
I soon arrived at the 7th Dalai Lama’s birth house. A large Chinese military convoy parked on the street with large weaponry and full riot gear. Their job, in this quiet and dusty town, is to smother incendiary behavior; the Dalai Lama is an extremely controversial figure in China, and Litang has been a center for Tibetan protests and monk’s self-immolations (burning oneself alive in protest).
All across Litang, there are scars from the Tibetan resistance: intense police presence, cameras, signs prohibiting any public speeches. Even the annual horse festival was cancelled some years back due to incendiary speeches and spontaneous protests in 2015.
How could this little town be the epicenter of a powerful resistance? And why was I allowed to visit?
Seeing as I already had experience being detained and interrogated by Chinese police (for taking photos near a Mao Zedong statue), I kept a low profile and left quickly. But not until I launched my VPN—a tunnel under the Great Firewall of China—and read a more complete history on Litang.
Next, I traversed the outskirts of town in quest of hot springs. The sun set before I arrived to the warm pools, but I found beautiful monasteries and prayer flags on the walk.
I even saw a yak, split from its herd, frolicking in a deep concrete moat trying to climb out.
Tractors converted into go-karts—carrying everything from a solo rider to a whole family—rolled past as their scrappy engines sounded like explosions in the crisp air. They would fit in Mad Max.
Where the hell am I? Litang could not have been more different than Chengdu.
Once back at the hostel, Medok welcomed me to into her cozy dining room. We sat across from each other at a square table and tucked our legs under blankets, which hung from the sides of the table like overgrown moss on a tree. At the center of the table was an electric hot-plate, which kept the yak dumplings and the blanket warm.
I didn’t have the heart to tell Medok I’m a vegetarian.
I prepared a cup of Chilean yerba maté (see Patagonia article) to share with her, and she poured me a cup of jasmine green tea. Over the next few hours, our conversation took many turns and covered a wide range of topics.
Medok was an expert at telling stories between the lines: using her eyes and facial expressions, she communicated more than her words when addressing topics like women in Tibetan culture, how Litang has changed since she was a young girl, and the future of Tibet.
Her confidence and composure was engaging, and like an expert politician, she carefully danced around anything that would get her in trouble with the government while still communicating her thoughts on controversial issues.
Around midnight we started talking about homosexuality, and that’s where our cultural differences most starkly contrasted. I fear my beliefs may have offended Medok, and she politely thanked me for joining her for dinner—my cue to go to bed.
The next day, with utmost kindness, we thanked each other for the friendship and parted ways. I joined another backpacker who was also at the hostel, Xiao Ma, to hitchhike the next leg of our trip.
We walked along the highway with our thumbs out looking for a ride to Yading Nature Reserve—a massive national park one hundred miles away. A minivan with a husband and wife adventure duo pulled over and welcomed us in. This ride lasted several hours, and the road went up to 15,400 feet through a windy, snowy mountain pass.
Wearing aviator sunglasses and a confident, “no B.S.” facial expression, Xiao Ma reminded me of an Asian Jack Kerouac. His sense freedom was contagious; I too felt like I was in the ‘60s.
Though I helped Xiao Ma practice his English, most of our conversations were in Chinese. Hours of conversation with Xiao Ma, who was patient and supportive of my developing language skills, greatly improved my speaking.
His fluency in Mandarin and street savvy made travel much easier, avoiding all tourist traps and expertly negotiating low prices much more efficiently than I could have.
By our last leg of the trip, in a hired minivan, I was growing irritated. Like many of the Chinese drivers I’d encountered before, ours blundered any attempt to modulate his voice and yelled everything. Partway through the nauseating, bumpy ride, he parked the car on the roadside. Reaching under his chair, he pulled out a decorated yak horn and removed the silver cap covering its base, and revealing a secret compartment filled with small pills.
He poured several pills onto his hand, pinched them, snorted the powder, and continued yelling. This mysterious yak drug induced even more yelling and aggressive driving. I channeled all of my inner zen and slept.
By the end of the day, Xiao Ma and I were exhausted and settled in a Tibetan hostel in Yading. The nature reserve becomes remarkably crowded during the high-season, but being the tail end of winter, we had the place all to ourselves.
It was like visiting Disneyland on a Monday morning.
The park looked like Yosemite meets the Himalayas: massive, jagged mountains with valleys at 13,000 feet indicated Asian giants, but the deep green forests and grassy meadows reminded me of my home in the Sierra Nevadas. For the first time since arriving in China, I felt nostalgic: mountains and forests have always elicited an enchanted familiarity.
I wanted nothing more than to to hike deep into them.
That night, I told the hostel owner my intended route for my next day’s hike, asking him to send a search party if I didn’t return. I would, alone, hike 24 grueling miles over three mountain passes and up to 15,800 feet, circling one of the park’s three sacred peaks.
The hike is so grand that it was sanctified by an early Dalai Lama, and many Tibetans complete the same annual pilgrimage over several days on horseback. For me, one day on foot would suffice.
After calling my parents to share the plans, sending them a map, establishing check-in times, and packing the appropriate survival gear as precaution, I went to sleep early. A growing sense of anticipation made me restless: tomorrow would be grueling and magical.
At 6:00 am, long before sunrise, I ate my oatmeal, drank maté, and set out with a daypack. I said goodbye to Xiao Ma and began descending the asphalt switchbacks to the trailhead. Something about that morning created a sense of relief: I felt free of the congestion in China, free from my massive backpack, and free from everyone else.
Nobody was in the park. I was alone for the next ten hours in the presence of holy mountains.
As the sun rose and cast a blood orange light across the holy peak, Mt. Chenresig, I picked up my pace. By mile seven, I found water in a meadow and started the uphill portion. I called my parents to let them know where I was and to expect another phone call within eight hours. Then, the real hike started.
Up a steep, rocky scree slope, I huffed and puffed like an overweight, asthmatic adolescent fulfilling PE credits.
At the first iconic stop, a psychedelic multi-colored glacial lake so holy that swimming in it is strictly forbidden, I paused for some crackers. At just under 15,000 feet, the air was frigid moving quickly. I snapped a photo, put in my headphones for music, and continued to the first col at 15,500 feet.
At the col, I stepped over snow and prayer flags to see a stunning view of multi-colored lakes and valleys below. Euphoria washed over me like a rogue wave, and tears of gratitude filled my eyes. To this day, I have only had one other experience being so struck by emotion while in the mountains: summiting Olancha peak on my Senior Year backpacking course.
Mountains have always been a place of magic and awe for me. Their grandeur provides a humbling sense of scale in a physical and chronological sense. They bring me peace. I feel most alive, challenged, humbled, and happy in the hills.
These mountains were not only holy for me, but to the Tibetan Buddhists they are the homes of gods. I’m not Buddhist, but I clearly understood the spiritual value of the hills for the locals.
With excitement of the situation, I jogged the next mile on a slight downhill, passing old stone huts. At 15,000 feet and 13 miles in, I felt incredible. How was this happening?
By mile 17, the altitude and exhaustion rolled over me like a Prius hitting a raccoon.
I paused on the most grueling portion of the hike: a 2-mile uphill walk ending with a 15,800 foot col. I ate a Clif bar and brewed maté with the last bit of hot water in my thermos, then continued.
One excruciating shuffle at a time, I worked my way up the final 1,000 foot climb. At the summit, the snow had accumulated so much that the trail was now at the height of the hanging prayer flags: I had to crawl through a nest of flags, light-headed and panting for air. I did not get altitude sickness, but my lungs were never satisfied with the amount of oxygen per breath.
Once out of the flags, the rest of the hike was smooth, gradual downhill with an up-close view of the Mt. Chenresig.
Once back at the hostel, less than 10 hours from my start, I had completed a 24 mile hike with total elevation gain of 5,700 feet. I retrieved my bag from a surprised hostel owner and got on the bus to leave the park. Xiao Ma met me at the park exit and arranged transportation for us both. He helped carry my bag as I was too exhausted to function well.
That night my stomach began hurting, and I did not eat much.
In the morning, I said goodbye to Xiao Ma and boarded a predawn bus to Shangri-La in Yunnan, China. On the bus, I grew nauseous and never regained my metabolism. With loud passengers and drivers smoking inside, I became increasingly irritated. My solution? Sleep.
Finally, at Shangri-La, I carried my bags through the toasty, crowded streets for a mile to get to my hostel. I splurged on a single room and planned to hibernate for the next day. Little did I know, I would become very sick.
The next four days were miserable. I had flu-like symptoms, could not eat, and barely had the strength to leave my bed. Shangri-La is slightly lower in elevation at 11,000 feet, but it was still difficult to stay hydrated. In stark contrast to the days before, I had no energy and missed home.
Like all moments—miserable and euphoric— it passed. Meditation and five gallons of water helped.
Four days later, I left the hostel and continued my journey to a major metropolitan city: Lijiang. Thankfully, my metabolism returned and I spent my final few days in China making up the lost calories with Lijiang’s delicious street food.
While Lijiang had its own flavor of adventures—stamped by bustling markets and pods of tourists—it would feel very tame. In comparison to my trip from overland journey from Chengdu to Shangri-la, Lijiang was leisure.
The overland route through China’s Wild West would satisfy my desire for adventure, challenge me physically and emotionally, and introduce me to wonderful people and land: all of the clichés.
By all accounts, China’s Wild West was most unorthodox for a solo American teenager.
—Andrew Buchanan